As of writing this document, the implementation is in pre-alpha state. Nevertheless present tense is used throughout this documentation.
open-search requires a lot of configuration that is rarely used and a few config-values that are used a lot!. Configuration is subdivided in a "running-config" and a "boot-config" both of which are roots of the configuration tree structure.
The config-tree is serializable (txt,xml,YAML) and can be edited via a HTTP front-end. Internally sub-trees can stored in binary format and cached for frequent use (MESI cache).
configuration should be standard / expert (conf. category, level), so that the average user won't be bothered with settings they don't understand or care about.